Kaspersky And Sophos Top Security Vendor Survey

The annual InformationWeek security survey finds wiggle room for lesser-known vendors in large IT shops, but it's a lack of mobile device security strategies that should raise eyebrows.

One way to do that is to do a better job of managing large, installed bases of clients. But that's where the likes of Symantec and McAfee excelled.

It should come as little surprise then that the report stated the top brand-name vendors still dominate the IT department's radar, which indicates that the breadth of product line is important.

That doesn't suggest the likes of Symantec and McAfee can rest on their laurels however. In fact, the report goes on to state though Symantec and McAfee are most prevalent in IT shops they are, "badly lagging their seven competitors on both acquisition and operational cost". However, it would be foolhardy to completely write these top-tier security vendors off as inflated or ineffective. Of the three vendors respondents use or have used or evaluated in the past 12 months, 42 percent said Symantec and 36 percent said McAfee.

"They're doing a very respectable job. I wouldn't say they're doing a terrible job," Marko says. "The larger and more diverse your organization, you're likely less concerned with pure A/V scanning performance or impact on system performance and more concerned with using the same vendor.